Koodankulam is a pointer, there is something fundamentally wrong with us: Aruna Roy

Aruna Roy

 

Aruna Roy is India’s leading social and political activist. She is a member of the National Advisory Council of the Government of India

As you know we are all very distressed about the action being taken on the non-violent protests against the establishment of a nuclear plant in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu. There are several questions which have been raised about the safety and viability of these reactors as well as the environmental damage they are liable to cause. These questions cannot be ignored after the Fukushima disaster especially as Kudankulam is on the coastline, parts of which have been effected by the Tsunami in the past.

Place for dissent is shrinking in our country which is evident here where non-violent protests being seen as intolerable by the Indian government. The cracking down on protests against the nuclear plant being set up in Koodankulam is an example of intolerance by the Government of Tamil Nadu, towards peaceful modes of expression of democratic concerns and differences.

On my visit to Koodankulam on 24th July 2012, I met ordinary people from the nearby villages of Koodankulam and Idinthikkarai. I also met many panchayat members and community leaders. All of them expressed their anguish and dismay at the government’s insistence on going ahead with the plant, turning a deaf ear to their legitimate concerns of safety and survival. Each one of them had been charged with police cases for expressing their dissent. This included charges of sedition. Aadilingam, a visually challenged sixty-year old man from Koodankulam village had been charged with 200 cases. His is not an isolated case. Selvamani, Ward Member of Koodankulam panchayat says she has no clue about the number of cases that she had been charged with. SwayambhuNadar, a resident of Koodankulam village, an old man with severe diabetics and hypertension, barely able to walk, was imprisoned for 15 days. During this period, he had to be hospitalized. Thousands of people were sent to jail, all of them charged with non-bailable offences. There are innumerable cases where passports of local people, (including young persons absent from the struggle and protests, but inhabitants of the area ) have been impounded and where fresh applications for passports have been turned down. People in the villages recalled how land acquisition by the KKNPP authorities destroyed their agriculture. Deprived of agriculture, beedi-making is today one of the prominent livelihoods for most of the women in the near-by villages, which gives a maximum of Rs 2000 a month.